


Tsuyu

by Binario



Category: BNA: Brand New Animal (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Grooming and other unconventional bonding methods, Shirou adopted himself a kid and is very lost, help him, spoilers for the whole show, there's no ship only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25327081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binario/pseuds/Binario
Summary: It’s raining outside, the soft pattering of droplets a faint sound that echoes through the apartment, and Michiru wants to melt into a puddle and disappear.
Relationships: Kagemori Michiru & Ogami Shirou
Comments: 34
Kudos: 421





	Tsuyu

**Author's Note:**

> Soft things? Yes, I’m in the mood for soft things.

It’s raining outside, the soft pattering of droplets a faint sound that echoes through the apartment, and Michiru wants to melt into a puddle and disappear.

Rainy season has come once again to Japan. Back in her hometown, the beginning of the rains brought with it the annual struggle of remembering to carry an umbrella and taming down her hair to something socially acceptable. Nazuna always got it worse with her idol hair and her skincare routine. Michiru would have to wait outside of her best friend’s house until she deemed herself ready to face the world, and that meant constantly being late for the first hour of classes. This damn season was always a mild annoyance when it came, but Michiru had never developed any strong feelings about it.

While she has seen rain before in Anima City, it’s her first experience of torrential downpour as a beastman.

And she hates it; she hates it so much.

The room is _sweltering_. She got rid of her jacket and socks as soon as the temperature started to go up, yet it seems any relief she got from that was temporal at best. Opening a window brought with it a whole new set of problems – it was fine at first, but the wind kicked up pretty quickly and she had to wrestle the window closed lest the rain soak into the wooden floor (she managed to close the offending opening, but not before she got showered in cold rain).

Michiru did manage to find a small fan inside the boxes of the storage room. It’s a pitiful thing, barely capable of producing a weak gale, but it’s better than nothing. After she found a place to plug it in, she was dismayed to realize that it couldn’t rotate at all. The cable was too short to position it so that it blew air her way while she bemoaned her fate on the bed, so she had to resign herself and laid on the ground in front of the fan.

She doesn’t know how long she spends pretending she’s dead. She feels sluggish, as if all of her energy turned tail and ran as soon as the first raindrop divebombed the window. The rhythmic sound of the rain falling all over the roof reminds her of those soothing videos Nazuna so dearly loved. Michiru never found them useful before, but now she’s lulled into a state of not-quite-sleeping. It’s too hot inside this room to actually nap yet she can’t seem to keep her eyes focusing on anything and really, would it be so bad if she sleeps through this whole horrid weather?

The universe must have it out for her today, for as soon as her brain manages to be relaxed enough to forget the oven she’s staying at, a door closes way too loudly for her liking, jolting her back into the sweet torture of reality. She makes a sound that’s _not_ a whine, she’s not a child and she doesn’t whine, thank you very much, and curls up on her side to hopefully dissuade the intruder from bothering her right now.

Her ears twitch as footsteps come to a stop next to her. Of all the times for him to come back early it _had_ to be today.

There’s a beat of silence.

“What are you doing?”

Michiru curls up tighter in response. Which turns out to be a terrible idea as her fur seems to, somehow, soak up even more of the damn heat in this house and make her feel like a living furnace. _What the hell._

“I’m not here; I’m dead,” is what she thinks she mumbles out. Might have sounded more like something trying to crawl out of her lungs; she’s starting to feel really dizzy all of a sudden.

The footsteps move away from her and she thinks she’s saved from having to think anything at all, but then her fan cuts out abruptly with one last sputtering burst of air serving as the sad salute of a fallen soldier. Michiru groans as she struggles to get into a sitting position and musters up enough energy to glare at Shirou, who holds the tiny fan between his hands and raises a questioning eyebrow.

Michiru glares harder.

The stupid man remains uncowed. She needs to really up her intimidation game. Perhaps she’ll rope Nazuna into teaching her how to act the part.

“It’s this humidity,” she groans. “I don’t know how you can tolerate this every year.”

Shirou just stares, like he’s not really understanding the problem. “Why haven’t you changed back into your human form?”

Michiru notes that he is in his human form. She’s not sure why, but it makes her feel more frustrated.

“I told you, it’s not that comfortable anymore!”

“And that’s why you decided to become a tripping hazard?”

“I tried everything!” Woah is this humidity making her cranky. “Opening the windows will rot the floor, though. And the only fan I could find was tiny enough that only Kuro can use it properly.”

“Fine, but have you tried getting rid of the shed?”

“Getting rid of the what now.”

Shirou pinches the bridge of his nose. “Have you never heard of shedding? Have you not brushed it off since you came to the city?”

This must be one of those big social things about beastmen she keeps stumbling upon. “Are you going to be angry if I say no?”

Shirou lets out a big sigh, likely thinking something along the lines of _why is this my life_ (Michiru has spent enough time with him to start classifying his frustration levels and this one easily falls into the ‘questioning all of my life choices’ category), and motions towards the general direction of the sofa. Her lethargic brain takes way too long to understand the silent order. By the time she’s lumbering over to claim a pillow, Shirou has come back from wherever he went. He sits down beside her and seems to be trying to gather strength from the heavens for whatever he’s going to do.

“Most of the beastmen --” oh, is this a lecture? Is he lecturing her? He looks like he wants to choke on his words, though. “-- have fur. Like most of the mammals in this planet, our fur follows the seasonal patterns of growth. We shed old fur constantly, and thus thick-furred species need to brush it off unless they want to carry it with them for the whole year.”

He gestures to her head and now that he mentions it, the fur there does feel kind of heavy.

“Oh, I didn’t--”

“Sometimes I forget how little you know about what you are,” Shirou grumbles, and she huffs out an offended noise. He ignores her and shows her what he went off to search for: a long-bristled wooden brush.

“This will be the only time I teach you, because someone has to.” And now he really is grimacing, like the very thought pains him. “I will only brush your head. After that, you’re on your own.”

Michiru nods, doing her best to convey that she understands when in reality she’s still kind of lost. She turns her back to him because she figures, it must be like hair brushing, right?

The first stroke of the brush between her tanuki ears sends her unexpectedly ten years into the past. She’s eight again, squirming for the sake of being a nuisance as her mother expertly parts her hair with a blue comb. Her hands grace her head as she braids it, tying it off with a bright red ribbon. It’s a feeling she had no idea she forgot, and it brings the sting of tears to her eyes. Great, she’s getting emotional over a _brush_ , of all things.

To keep herself from actually crying and having to go through the whole embarrassing ordeal of explaining why she’s suddenly bawling her eyes out, Michiru does the first thing that comes to mind: ask the ancient god uncomfortable questions.

“So, do beastmen groom in public or is this like cutting your nails?”

Her ears feel the gust of breath that Shirou makes as he sighs. He keeps on the rhythmic brushing as he answers. “Grooming is both a healthy habit and a social activity, but it’s not common to see it while walking down the street; you shouldn’t go up to strangers and offer to groom them.”

That sounds recited. Is this the kind of stranger danger talk beastmen give their kids?

“Oh. It’s, what, a friend thing? Would you groom a sibling?”

“Yes, it’s normally done with family and close friends,” Shirou says, sounding increasingly more reluctant to continue this conversation, which only emboldens her even more.

“If I ask Nazuna if she would let me groom her, it wouldn’t be weird?”

“If she understands the meaning behind it, no, she shouldn’t mind.”

“If it’s so common then why haven’t I seen you do it?”

The brush moves towards the fur behind her ears and isn’t it hair, technically? Or is her hair fur too? Given that it did change color along with her arms and legs, she’s willing to bet that it’s something like a mane. A lion’s mane. But tanukis have no mane, why would she have one?

“I don’t partake in it.”

“In grooming? Didn’t you say that it’s a healthy habit?”

“In _social_ grooming. Now stop talking.”

“But why --”

“ _Michiru_.”

She keeps quiet for the following minute. But the brush on her hair is really distracting and she _did_ decide to learn more about her disgruntled housemate. Apartmentmate? The stingy old wolf she house-sits for. Shirou almost never talks about himself, which makes it all extremely difficult, but Michiru is not one for giving up so easily. Because she surely left both her common sense and all of her tact back in her hometown along with her previous life, she goes and blurts out the question before she processes how bad an idea it is to do so.

“Did you often groom with your family?”

Now the brushing does pauses. She can hear the creak of the wooden handle as the pressure on it skyrockets. Her ears drop flat against her head in shame. _“That’s just great, Michiro,”_ she screams at herself. _“Try to dig yourself out of this one, you fool.”_

“Wait, no, what I mean -- I didn’t mean to --”

“Yes.”

“You see, I was trying to -- eh?”

The brushing starts anew, but there’s something unusually frail in his tone.

“I groomed with my family, yes.”

“Oh.”

The silence is stifling. The humidity feels even worse now. She can’t allow the conversation to just crash and burn, not when they have just achieved some degree of mutual understanding. Michiru is sure that, should she choose to change the topic, he would allow it without any lingering resentment. Nevertheless, it doesn’t really feel like something she should sweep under the rug.

Michiru forces uncertainty out of her voice. “Do you miss them?”

He moves the brush behind her other ear. “It was a long time ago.”

“I’m sure a thousand years is a lot,” she concedes carefully. “But don’t you still think about them?”

He says nothing to that, and her brain jumps into damage control mode.

“I miss my mom!” She blurts out, winces (which earns her a quiet _‘stay still’_ ), and then hurries to add. “Not that I think it could compare! I mean, she’s just back home, living her life. I… I did run out on her. When I tried to come to Anima City, y’know? I just didn’t want to burden her with my problems. I hurt her when I disappeared. She still baked me a cake for my birthday even though she knew I was probably not going to see it anyway…”

Ah, hell. She’s tearing up.

She rubs her eyes with her hands and wills herself not to do this right now.

“I just… I think there’s nothing wrong with you missing them. Doesn’t ruin your whole mysterious wolf persona you got going on. It’s… relatable? I think that might be the word.”

That _still_ gets no reaction out of him and Michiru kind of wants to take it all back if he won’t even _try_ to cooperate with her after a heartfelt confession that was not easy at all, _who even gets the guy_ \--

“Do you still wish you could go back?”

“Eh? Back as in back to being human?”

“Back before this happened and prevent it.”

Ah. How many times must he have asked himself the same? If she can wish to change things in her short eighteen years of life, then surely an immortal must come across those thoughts once in a while.

“The first few months? That was all I could think off,” Michiro admits. “I did not know yet what, exactly, had happened to me, but I did wonder if I could have done something differently. Maybe if I had been slightly more curious when Nazuna was taken or perhaps if I chose to stay with my family instead of running.”

“But in hindsight, I don’t really regret it. Not the thing with my parents -- that I do regret so much. I’m in for the scolding of a lifetime when I see them again. But getting these powers and coming to the city? No, not anymore. I got to meet so many amazing people. And I also realized how closed my worldview really was and how biased I was acting.”

The brush makes one last loop before it leaves her head completely. Michiro tries tilting her head and oh, she really should have done this before. It feels so _light_. The humidity has even ceased its constant siege on her senses; this is paradise.

“You are a kid; how did you get so wise?”

She whips back to face him. “Wait, is that a _compliment_ \--”

He promptly shoves the fur-filled brush into her hands, which Michiro accepts on instinct before she realizes what she’s doing.

“Time is not a kind master,” he says while fishing for the stray clumps of hair sticking to his clothes. He pushes them towards her which, fair, but still, bold of him to assume that she’s picking this up. “When you live for so long you lose track of things that mattered. I think I needed that reminder.”

Her awed surprise must really show on her face clear as day. Shirou stands and refuses every attempt at returning the brush.

“Even if it’s temporary, thanks for staying, Michiro.”

Mission completed, Shirou crosses the hall to go upstairs. Michiro, still reeling, watches the brush on her hands. That did happen, right? It’s more than she thought she would get out of him, more than she knows what to do with. He has always been quite distant, even after they partnered up for so many cases, but isn’t that mostly her fault? Obviously, it’s on him too, but it’s not like she had made any merits to actually understand him from the get-go. It feels heartwarming, seeing how far they’ve come from the day of the festival. Michiro would be lying if she said that she didn’t care for him after everything they’ve been through. But does he know that? Does he no longer see her as the lost, half-human tanuki that he got roped into helping? He wouldn’t go out of his way to save her so many times if he did, right?

_I groomed with my family._

He said so himself, he doesn’t partake in it as an everyday thing, does he? So, what does it say about this whole situation?

_“Ah, I’m dense.”_

“Hey, Shirou?” She asks because the atmosphere is warm like a summer morning, and after all of that she feels like it’s the right thing to say.

He pauses under the doorframe, half turning back towards her.

“If you want to, I could brush your fur. You know, as a thanks for helping me today. _Someone_ did tell me that it’s a family thing and all.”

He looks at her and she knows that he understands her tentative question when he smiles lightly in reply.

“Maybe when you learn how not to tear out my fur with that brush.”

She grins and brandishes the wooden object like a sword. “Oh, _it’s on_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tsuyu (梅雨).- the Japanese rainy season.
> 
> \--
> 
> I do love myself some found family; it's the king of tropes (for me, anyway).


End file.
